Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History.Trachodon, a Duck-Billed Dinosaur.Reptile, sixteen feet high, alarmed by the approach of a huge carnivorous Tyrannosaurus, ready to plunge into the water for safety.
Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History.Trachodon, a Duck-Billed Dinosaur.Reptile, sixteen feet high, alarmed by the approach of a huge carnivorous Tyrannosaurus, ready to plunge into the water for safety.
Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History.
Trachodon, a Duck-Billed Dinosaur.
Reptile, sixteen feet high, alarmed by the approach of a huge carnivorous Tyrannosaurus, ready to plunge into the water for safety.
“The armored dinosaurs had developed stronger armor, while another group had devised a novel and most extraordinary protection, a huge buckler over the head and tremendous horns over the eyes and on top of the nose. There were theHorned Dinosaurs, with their huge heads. One of these, Triceratops, he of the three-horned face, had a neck with an enormous bony frill like the spiked collar that some bulldogs wear, as well as his threatening horns. He was a powerful beast, Perry, this Triceratops, and must have been able to hold his own against the terrible carnivorous dinosaurs that threatened every moment of their lives.”
“Were they as big?”
“Yes, bigger and far more menacing. Tyrannosaurus, the Tyrant Saurian, was perhaps the fiercest creature that ever drew breath upon the earth. He reached a length of forty-seven feet and stood twenty feet high, standing upon his huge hind legs. His head was more than four feet long and his deep jaws bore a grim array of tearing six-inch teeth. The hind legs, though larger than those of elephants, had feet like those of birds, with sharp ripping claws, and the forefeet were clawed like the talons of an eagle.”
“Not much chance if a thing like that got after you,” the boy ejaculated.
“It would be a mistake, though, Perry,” his uncle warned him, “to imagine even the Tyrannosaurus as swift or active. An animal largerthan an elephant, with a tiny reptile brain, smaller than a man’s clenched fist, could never have leapt or sprung upon a foe, but must have advanced with a heavy lumbering run. There came the value, my boy, of the great massive defense of Triceratops, the three-horned, for while that heavy head with the neck collar of plates would have been of little value against a small, swift enemy, it might easily impale the ponderous Tyrannosaurus as he ran fiercely though clumsily onward to the fight. They were slow and deadly fighters, Perry, those giant reptiles of old, and probably, every meeting meant the death of one or both, and was ended with the first or second grapple.”
“I wish we could see one of those fights between two scrappy monster Saurians, anyway,” the boy said wistfully.
“That is past wishing for,” the scientist replied, “all we can hope for is to study the way they must have fought. Perhaps, Perry, if we should find some specimens of the great carnivorous dinosaurs, the Museum may be able to mount them in the attitude of fighting, and thus, ten million years after their death, they will thrill the world of men, when, during all their lifetime,they had no audience to applaud nor any spectators to terrorize.”
The following day, and for many days thereafter, Perry prospected with his uncle throughout the Laramie Plains. He stood in the old Bone Cabin Quarry, he saw the thousands of bones that still lie at the base of the Como Bluffs, he followed eagerly and anxiously the various rock waves of the plains. Many and many a fossil he found. Indeed, there was hardly a day that he did not return to camp with news of some discovery, but always the professor found that it was a common specimen, or one of which there were more complete skeletons known. Yet, as Antoine reminded him, each day held new promise.
On the very last day but one of the time allotted for their stay, Perry decided to ride out in a different direction. His uncle had said that some time in the future he intended to do some prospecting near the Freeze Out Hills, and Perry, remembering that the Bone Cabin quarry had been found almost by accident, started out early that morning for the longest ride he had undertaken by himself. The day was hot and sultry, but the lad had a curious elation.
“I feel it in my bones that I’m going to findsomething to-day!” he had said to his uncle before leaving.
Noon came before he had reached the desired point, but the rock formations began to look familiar, more like those in which he had been working for the past three weeks, and so, though he was far from camp, Perry went riding onward still, knowing he would be late in returning, but buoyed up by the feeling that the fates had something good in store.
His senses were keenly awake, the green and pink striped rocks seemed to beckon him on. He felt as though the impossible might happen, as though one of the great dinosaurs might stride out, as in life, from behind some of the fantastically carved buttes on either hand. A jack rabbit, suddenly leaping along a dry ravine, brought his heart in his mouth with a jump. A stumble of his cow-pony changed the current of his thoughts and made him realize that he had not stopped for dinner, nor given his pony any water since breakfast.
Dismounting on the instant, he slung out the canteen, and, finding a slightly hollowed rock in a shadowed place where it had not been turned to blister-heat by the sun, gave his pony a drinkand a handful of oats. He took out his own sandwiches and idly tossed a crumb to a lizard basking on a rock hard by. The little brown creature snatched the crumb, and with a flicker of his tail, disappeared. Idly, his lunch over, Perry followed where the lizard had gone and stooped down to look into the hole.
“If a chap could only multiply that lizard by about a hundred times,” he said to himself, “it wouldn’t be so awfully far from a Diplodocus. A hundred times as long—”
He stopped.
“A hundred times—”
What was that queer exposure in the rock?
He rubbed his eyes. Remembering that Antoine had warned him of the strange appearances that seemed to come in the glare of those painted rocks, he turned away and looked into the shadow. Then, hardly daring to trust his eyes, he walked over quietly and softly to a long, low mound, from three inches to a foot above the surface, which ran along the edge of a small gully.
A long broken line of weathered bone met his gaze.
Feverishly, hardly daring yet to believe that it might be true, he fell on his knees beside thebones, and with his small geological pick, began to clear away the rock, half hopefully, half fearfully seeking to make sure. The rock was fairly soft. Soon, at the end nearest to him, one of the larger bones showed clear, as the sun and weather had cracked the rock around it.
Chip, chip, chip!
The minutes and the hours passed, but the boy, down beside the brown bones on the ground, knew nothing of the time. Forty feet away, the pony plucked at the scanty herbage, but Perry never took his eyes off from the ground. The rock was not hard, and was sufficiently rotted to break under the pick, and by fractions of an inch the bones grew clearer.
Chip! Chip! Chip!
Over the mountains to the westward the sun began to fall, the shimmering heat of the desert cleared and the distant buttes glowed purple. But, though the boy’s arm was aching and his back was stiff from long stooping, he was as unwitting of the pain as of the waning light, and the blows of the little hammer came down with ceaseless regularity, telling the strokes of doom that should bring some monstrous creature from its ten-million-year-old grave.
Chip! Chip! Chip!
The rim of the sun had touched the further hills, when, still in a daze, the boy straightened up and looked at what he had uncovered. Small though was the head, fragmentary as was the amount of rock he had removed, he added hope and imagination to knowledge and envisioned the whole. The monstrous length of neck which he felt sure must be the meaning of those slight outcrops hinted a colossal story. He paced the whole line of the skeleton.
One! Two! Three!—Thirty-four paces! One hundred and two feet! It could not be!
But, returning his steps, the paces came to the same.
Perry looked at the sky and knew that it was evening. Carefully he had watched his landmarks as he rode, but too many people had told him of the dangers of being lost in the Bad Lands for him to dare to try to make his way home. Still, he might make a start.
Back to his pony went the boy, and, before mounting, he looked round once again to see the great mushroom-capped butte that was his homeward guide. He could see it nowhere! And, while he watched, he saw shapes that had beenquite familiar in the daylight change under the quickly fading dusk. There was no help for it, he must stay the night through and wait until the morning to find his way back to camp.
But the giant skeleton lured him again, and, a few moments later, he was on his knees again beside that ancient saurian, and the strokes of the hammer fell throbbing across the silence of a night in the Bad Lands.
Chip! Chip! Chip!
Far away in the distance, where perhaps some slight vegetation came down from the hills, for he was on the very edge of the desert country, came the long-drawn howl of a coyote. For a second the hammer hung poised, then fell again, beating, beating through the night.
He knew that to expose such a skeleton would mean the work of a month or two for several men, probably with the aid of dynamite, but he was determined at least to bring an inch or two, clear. The chill star-shine gave him light enough, but though the day had been so hot, the night was cold. He piled a heap of sage-brush and mesquite and lit a fire. Then, unable to leave his find, back he went to the skeleton again.
Chip! Chip! Chip!
Courtesy of J. B. Lippincott & Co.A Brachiosaur, Largest of All Land Creatures.Restoration of Gigantosaurus, from East Africa, closely related to the American genus Brachiosaurus (restoration based on incomplete knowledge and is much exaggerated, since, though bulkier, it probably was not longer than the Diplodocus, correct scientific restoration awaits setting-up of skeleton now in Berlin): a Diplodocus, which previously held the record for size, shown to the left; also, for comparison, the figure of a man is drawn in, though, of course, Gigantosaurus lived at least eight million years before the first man. From Gregory, in “Geology of To-day.”
Courtesy of J. B. Lippincott & Co.A Brachiosaur, Largest of All Land Creatures.Restoration of Gigantosaurus, from East Africa, closely related to the American genus Brachiosaurus (restoration based on incomplete knowledge and is much exaggerated, since, though bulkier, it probably was not longer than the Diplodocus, correct scientific restoration awaits setting-up of skeleton now in Berlin): a Diplodocus, which previously held the record for size, shown to the left; also, for comparison, the figure of a man is drawn in, though, of course, Gigantosaurus lived at least eight million years before the first man. From Gregory, in “Geology of To-day.”
Courtesy of J. B. Lippincott & Co.
A Brachiosaur, Largest of All Land Creatures.
Restoration of Gigantosaurus, from East Africa, closely related to the American genus Brachiosaurus (restoration based on incomplete knowledge and is much exaggerated, since, though bulkier, it probably was not longer than the Diplodocus, correct scientific restoration awaits setting-up of skeleton now in Berlin): a Diplodocus, which previously held the record for size, shown to the left; also, for comparison, the figure of a man is drawn in, though, of course, Gigantosaurus lived at least eight million years before the first man. From Gregory, in “Geology of To-day.”
Little by little the form of the huge creaturebegan to appear to him. This tiny fragment of rock grew huge to his tired eyes. Longer than a Diplodocus, bigger than a Brontosaur, the hundred feet and more of the mighty monarch of the past stretched out upon the plain, stretched as it had fallen for the last sleep on the borders of that lake ten million years ago.
The cold stole into the boy’s bones, and his fingers were so weary that he could scarcely hold the hammer. He piled the fire high again, and went back to his work. But the strokes fell slowly now, and the beating of the hammer in the night was labored and irregular. The high-heaped fire sent its beacon gleam against the sky and showed the shadow of the boy, striving the long night through to bring the giant of the past to light.
Chip!... Chip!...
The hammer fell aimlessly. Ineffectively the boy made an attempt to raise it, but his fingers were nerveless. He swayed once, twice, then fell forward on his hands across the Titan, sunk in the sleep of exhaustion.
As the dawn broke, three riders, at full speed, guided by the light of the fire, came dashing down the ravine, and the first rays of the rising sunshowed them the boy asleep, pillowed on the outcrop of a Brachiosaurus, which later quarrying was to prove one of the finest of its kind.
“Some paleontologist!” said the professor, and laid his overcoat over the sleeping boy.
THE END